Government lotteries are one of the world's major businesses. Billions of dollars in revenues are generated by lotteries in various states and U.S. protectorates.
During 1991, over 21 billion dollars in revenue were derived from state lotteries. The revenue equalled the combined income of America's five most profitable corporations.
One deficiency with current lottery number pickers is that the same lottery number picker cannot be used for all of the existing daily and/or weekly lotteries.
The numbers from which selections are made for weekly lotteries in the various states range from twenty-five to fifty-four numbers. Daily lotteries require players to select three or four numbers from numbers ranging from 1 to 1000.
Another aspect of the current practice is that lottery number pickers are complex and expensive to manufacture.
In my co-pending U.S. application Ser. Nos. 08/086,308, U.S. Pat. No. 5,358,245 and application Ser. No. 08/086,029, lottery number pickers are disclosed wherein pluralities of small cylindrical disks are used for picking lottery numbers. A pair of transparent covers are permanently attached to a base by a manufacturer after the disks are loaded into the base.
Although these inventions provide numerous benefits, one disadvantage is that a manufacturer must produce seventeen different lottery pickers to meet the requirements of the various states, the only difference in the pickers being the number of disks. Another disadvantage is that a distributor must maintain a large inventory of lottery pickers.
The complexity caused by the differences in lotteries results in high investment, manufacturing and inventory costs. It can also result in poor quality because of improper assembly and/or improper shipments.